Around the middle of this year, my Book Club compatriots staged an intervention meant to curb my out-of-control habit of . . . buying books?!? Yes, folks, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and for me the term “gummy” refers to store-bought tapioca. But I do feel a deep yearning every time a new title appears on my social media or Amazon page or a friend’s DM or blog post! Even if it doesn’t catch my fancy, I often scoop up a title; my friend Jim Noy had the kindness (?) to give this state of mind a name – “Friedmanesque.”

Anyway, the result of that intervention was that I admitted I had a problem. In every way, financially and emotionally, there are worse habits to plague one, but I have certainly tried to get things under control. I visit my favorite used bookstores much less frequently. However, it’s just my luck that all the small presses around here are constantly releasing such intriguing titles! Some do it monthly! And there is sooooo much delectable crime fiction to tempt a true fan . . . 

For proof, you need look no further than my friend Kate Jackson’s blog Cross-Examining Crime: at the end of every year, she gathers fellow bloggers together to celebrate all the reprints that have come out from January to December by each covering two of our favorites and holding a vote with her readers to select The Reprint of the Year. At the start, Kate sends a huge list that she has compiled; rarely has she missed a title! I have to tell you that this list always makes me feel wonderful, if only because if I compare it to my actual purchase record for the year, I have been an extremely moderate spender! 

This year, I’ll admit that while the list was long, there was less that had me burning to write about it. But I did make my selections, and I present them to you, today and next Saturday. After that, it’s up to you to head over to Kate’s place and cast your votes!!

After years of complaining together about the dearth of John Dickson Carr being republished in book form since the last mid-century, all of my blogger friends and I are thrilled by the efforts of both the British Library and Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press to return Carr to the  bookstore shelves where he belongs! This year is no exception, as both publishing houses have released excellent examples of the author at his trickiest and most intriguing. From Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics comes a title that, in my review from 2017, I called the “Roger Ackroyd” of Carr’s mysteries: 1937’s The Burning Court. 

If you do not know why Carr’s novel is so deserving of its comparison to Christie’s classic, you have not read the book. So let me quickly let you know that the trickery afoot in Carr’s novel bears absolutely no resemblance to the twists that made Christie’s book justifiably famous. There are different elements that make Carr’s novel stand out from the rest of his work, and I urge newcomers to grab a copy of the book and read it. To whet your whistle, I will only repeat what I said in my earlier review, that the plot rises,

“. . . from the most ordinary of circumstances of a dull publisher’s assistant named Ted Stevens, who takes the train home to his ordinary Pennsylvania suburb to have dinner with his loving wife. In his briefcase is the manuscript of a history of female poisoners, and when he peruses the illustrations that accompany the book, he finds one of a long dead killer who exactly resembles his own, very much alive and youthful, wife!”

This leads to some murders involving some neighbors, but the facts seem so impossible that even we savvy readers may begin to suspect something supernatural afoot. Can Carr make rational sense out of these bizarre and impossible circumstances? Rest assured, he can, and he does! But it comes at an awful and fabulous price!!

For those of you who have read the book, a perfect reason to buy another copy is the introduction in the AMC edition by mystery aficionado and Carr scholar Dan Napolitano. I believe he is working on a new book about Carr, and he really knows his stuff. In a few pages, Dan fills our heads with all sorts of fascinating knowledge and ideas, including the reason that a book like The Burning Court makes sense after the huge output by Carr in the first half of the decade, which “had been imbued with Carr’s love of the grotesque excesses of Grand Guignol, especially the early novels featuring Bencolin.”Hamish Hamilton, Carr’s British publisher, refused to issue Castle Skull for this reason and wrote to the author with this challenge: ‘There is a large section of the public which fights shy of anything which is so grotesque as to seem unreal or, perhaps I should say, unlikely to happen in ordinary life. Why not try the experiment sometime of taking a perfectly usual situation and exercising your ingenuity upon that? 

That is exactly what Carr accomplishes here, moving from England to his home of Pennsylvania and crafting a beautiful puzzle. But the grotesquery, the excesses, the horror are always lurking in the background and threatening to erupt. It is what Carr chooses to do with all of this that makes The Burning Court a special case in his canon, a must-read for mystery fans, and a title worthy of your vote for Reprint of the Year. 

As a bonus, this is one of the only John Dickson Carr stories ever adapted to film. (A puzzle almost more baffling than the books themselves!) La Chambre Ardente was made in France in 1962 by director Julien Duvivier. I haven’t seen it, but from the synopsis I read, the movie leans into the gothic in exactly the way Carr’s editor begged him not to do. 

See you next Saturday with my second nominee.